


As Web, As Worm

by primeideal



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Horror, Human Sacrifice, Sea Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 02:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19053562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/primeideal
Summary: Though Kyn had not at first been enamored with the notion of being sacrificed to the daughter of the abyss, he had to admit the idea had grown on him.





	As Web, As Worm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sadistrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sadistrix/gifts).



Though Kyn had not at first been enamored with the notion of being sacrificed to the daughter of the abyss, he had to admit the idea had grown on him. Since his name had come forth from the lots, he had been regarded as something more and less than human, blessed with a power even the priests could not fathom. He was the equal of the entire village’s splendor—all of its crops and roofs and weavers and heralds would prosper in the year to come, if only he embraced his fate joyously. Who among his peers could make that claim?

Yet when the fateful day came, he awoke to unpleasantness. His head ached, and the light streaming from the window in the temple pained his eyes. As he stood, his leg cramped, and even putting weight on it did not ease the strain.

“Will she accept even one such as I?” he asked, as Luvri the priest came to begin the rites. Luvri seemed to have aged quickly with the burden of the ceremony at hand; his beard was white and ragged, in contrast to Kyn’s dark stubble.

“None of us who walk the land are truly free from weakness,” Luvri said. “All we can do is trust in her clemency.”

It was not a very satisfying answer, but, Kyn supposed, were she to devour the city out of unsatisfaction, it would still no longer be his problem.

The ritual called for him to walk about the village twice, both sunwise and widdershins. Luvri hurried him on, as if not wanting him to dwell on what he was leaving behind. But the pain in Kyn’s leg made him limp slowly as he took in the little skyline. Had the bakeries’ smokestacks always been so busy, the trees always so tall?

Then he made his way to the shore, shivering against the wind. It seemed much colder than it had been the day before, but not even the priests could foretell the weather. And surely it was not just the cold that made him shiver.

He stripped naked, and Luvri planted a kiss to his bare neck, the long beard uncomfortable against his skin. “Go now,” he bade, “and do not look back. Our thanksgiving and hope go with you.”

The ocean, at least, was the same as it had always been. As a fisherman, Kyn’s feet had long since been calloused against rocks and seaweed. When he reached the dropoff, he began to swim forward with long, powerful strokes. The priests had counseled him that he might as well merely walk ahead; the remaining minutes would mean little. The terror would come to claim her own, either way. Yet while he cherished the life he had won for the village, he had some fondness for his own life, too. He would swim a few strokes more, while enough warmth remained in his blood to propel him.

He was at home, the water encompassing him in every direction, the village behind already a mirage. And then he was nowhere; he lived without breath, beheld without sight, heard without words. His skin was not his own, but he felt the slickness of the lady close against him.

“No,” she said. “Go back. You I do not choose.”

“Am I unfit for you?” he protested, though he knew no mouth nor sound. He remembered the pain that had greeted him that morning, but all that was forgotten. Only his pride remained.

“You? Unfit?” She gave a deep, rolling, laughter, the mirth that shook the tides and strew boats into flotsam at her command. “Sweet you were, and keen. Yet your masters cheat.”

“I am the slave of none!” Kyn retorted. “This was not the ending I first chose, yet I greeted it with a full heart.”

“You did,” she soothed him. Was he grasping at any shred of hope to sustain him in his terror, or were her scales on his skin like the touch of a lover? “Have I eaten your wits as well as your flesh? Do you not remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Remember _me_.”

She clenched him tightly and the winds howled in submission. Again pain pierced his head, his legs, and Kyn was caught up in a nightmare, or a memory.

He saw as the lady did, how a human had swum to her dwelling place, how she had savored him and adorned the trenches with his white bones. Then he saw the magicians test their art on the land, as a human might admire the patterns in a spider’s web: cunning and well-made, for a small thing, yet able to be swept aside at the slightest whim of her design.

The artificers worked with sand and blood and fire, and then, from the midst of their incantations, there came forth a slumbering form: the pale image of her offering, whom she alone had rights to tend. The imitation carried the pain of his destruction, but could not bear the memory of her face, of the mysteries that awaited him beyond the coast of time. What mortal could contain those, and stand?

Then the priests took him to the harbor where he would await the morning, so as not to show him that a year had passed since his death. If their magic held, one human would make the year’s gift for the village. Again and again.

“I did not know,” Kyn stammered. “Please, I did not know, I would not have agreed...”

“Do you think I do not know that?” she scoffed. “It is they who misled you, used you like a worm on a string. They will make recompense.”

“No,” he said, and it was his choice alone. “I gave myself—this time, last time, I don’t know—to keep the village safe. You cannot—you _must_ not destroy it now.”

“And you are willing to reawaken? To be knit again, a shadow of what you were?”

“Only a shadow,” he said. “The true Kyn, the first Kyn—he who has known your touch and the world after, he is safe from time and their enchantments.”

“For a walker of the land, you are wise,” said the lady. “Even were it chance, they did well to choose you.”

Fully human he may not have been, but he was human enough to feel the wonder of her grasp, helpless in her clutches, before he yielded to the darkness, hoping against hope he would not see the sun’s light again.


End file.
